


The Gold Shines Through

by leoandlancer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: First Meetings, Genji is a Little Shit, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24594775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: Hanzo is horrified when Genji kidnaps and brings home Hanzo's long avoided soulmate for safekeeping. But then he meets Jesse McCree, and it's just possible his brother wasn't completely misguided.Written for Resonance: A Soulmate McHanzine, which was awesome to work with!
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 26
Kudos: 338





	The Gold Shines Through

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Resonance: A Soulmate McHanzine which you can find on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/mchanzine)! It's an amazing zine and I am so stoked I got in!

"You know how when I was seven and broke your practice sword and you promised you wouldn't kill me if I told father myself but then father found out without me and so technically that promise still stands?"

Genji stood gasping in the stone doorway, his clothes ripped, a new bruise on his cheek, his nose bloody, and one hand clutching his side. His hair was windshot and he looked far more flustered about this interview with Hanzo than whatever fight he'd fled.

It was hot in the greenhouse, stuffy with pollen, the ferns and flowers all bursting from their beds. They hadn't been tended for ten years and joyfully ran feral while the resort and its outbuildings rotted away. Hanzo stood in warm golden sunshine and tried to find some inner reserve of patience.

"Have you been shot?" he asked, countering Genji's question while he planned a counter-attack. 

"Yes," Genji said briskly. "Barely. You're not going to kill me? I get one free, that's how this works."

"I'm certain it does not."

"No, you won’t go back on a promise. You're revoltingly honourable. Just promise me so I can tell you about my day and live."

"Two days; you've been gone a while."

"I can explain," Genji said, "Once I’ve extracted this promise from you."

Hanzo had been working on the floor plan of one of the Shimada's banks, meticulously mapping the assorted traps that stood between him and his former clan’s fortune. He leaned back against the work table, amid a storm of trailing vines, and waited for his brother to make some kind of sense.

"Is that a promise?" Genji asked suspiciously.

"No. What have you done?"

Genji weighed his options, checked the wound on his side, and apparently determined that this conversation should move along. "I kidnapped a man."

Hanzo nodded encouragingly. This alone wasn't cause for alarm.

Genji licked his lips, checked his exit, and took a deep breath in case it was his last. "I kidnapped Jesse McCree."

For a moment, Hanzo felt the stone under his feet pitch like a ship at sea. He stared at his brother. His mouth burned dry.

Hanzo had learned to write the name Jesse McCree before he'd learned to write his own. 

Soulmates weren't rare. But Hanzo had been the first Shimada in the history of his clan to ever bear a soulmark, and Jesse McCree didn't have the distinction of being rich, powerful or even useful. He had the dubious honour of being American, a year younger than Hanzo, and, as far as the Shimada elders had been able to determine, a criminal.

"Dearest brother," Genji said, leaning away, preparatory to backing out, "Remember how much you love me and how..."

It took the span of several heartbeats for Hanzo to remember that Genji, despite indications to the contrary, wasn't an idiot.

"Explain," Hanzo managed. His voice wasn't totally steady and he was trying to remember his ancestry, the weight of a thousand years of warlords in his genes weighing him down.

"I have a full explanation," Genji said. "I swear I did the right thing."

"Oh that remains to be seen," Hanzo straightened his spine, kept his feet braced, tried to keep his mind from spinning out in panic. "An explanation. Now. Make it a good one."

"I was in America keeping watch on Talon like you asked, and I found out that they were planning to kidnap someone and use them for leverage. I'm brilliant, of course, so I worked out who they were talking about and stole the file on them, found their target first, which wasn't easy by the way, but when I did find their target I uh..." Genji took a deep breath and blinked at his brother, checked the hand at his side for blood loss, and apparently skipped ahead a little. "Things got a little wild. But! I persuaded this target to come with me."

"Did you leave Talon unwatched?" Hanzo jerked to full alert.

"Yes, I thought they earned a break from 24/7 surveillance; don't worry I left a book of coupons for them as a farewell gift before I left. No, of course I called in back up."

Hanzo relaxed again.

Genji dripped blood onto the wide stone tiles of the greenhouse floor.

"Their target was Jesse McCree," Hanzo said after a pause.

"Oh yes. I have no idea how they found out, but they were absolutely about to pounce."

"And you persuaded him to come with you before Talon could get to him."

"It was effortless," Genji checked his bleeding again. "I'm irresistibly persuasive."

"So he's here." Hanzo was mentally running through ways of getting Jesse McCree safely  _ away  _ from here. 

"Yes, I didn't tell him anything specific." Genji shot a glance at Hanzo's left arm. "He’s in the pool house."

Hanzo thought of the empty pool, the pink glass ceiling, the wide doors to the outside…

"He's detained, ok?" Genji seemed to read Hanzo's mind and sounded a little defensive. "I have his gun."

"He had a  _ gun _ ?" Hanzo knew next to nothing about Jesse McCree save for his name but he was learning a lot very fast. " _ He _ shot you?"

"Afternoon," said an amiable voice from the door. "If it helps, I wasn't aiming to kill."

Genji shot away from the door like he'd been scalded. Hanzo reached for his bow even as he saw the open palms of the man that unexpectedly filled the doorway.

"I'm unarmed." The man ducked his head as he eased under the low door frame into the greenhouse, and smiled as he straightened again. "As you've heard. Unarmed and really interested to hear about this Talon that made me a target."

"Detained, brother?" Hanzo didn't look at Genji. He couldn't take his eyes off the stranger. Hanzo had his bow in his hands, an arrow ready.

He suspected he wouldn’t have the guts to use it.

Jesse McCree was taller than Hanzo had expected, with wide shoulders and the heavy build of a natural fighter. Dressed in soft fabrics and hard leather and a disreputably holey serape around his shoulders and a nicked hat with a wide brim. He looked like a vision standing at full height under the spray of climbing roses in the sunshine. He smiled, and Hanzo found that it was impossible to look away.

"I handcuffed you and left you with your legs tied together, chained to a steel ladder at the bottom of an empty pool with three people standing guard over you!” Genji had apparently found his voice. “I said detained and I meant detained!"

The stranger, Jesse McCree, nodded encouragingly. "He did his best and it wasn't bad."

"Handcuffed," Genji insisted.

Jesse McCree smiled, slowly reached into his pocket, and pulled out a short length of chain, with a piece of brutally twisted steel at each end. He set the ruin on a table with a clink.

Hanzo hadn't moved, couldn't stop staring. Should not have let this man, their prisoner, reach into his pocket. Certainly not someone who could tear steel handcuffs apart with his hands.

Genji broke the silence. "Neat." 

"Thanks," Jesse McCree smiled, looked from Hanzo to Genji and back. "Who's Talon?"

"Criminal organization," Hanzo answered automatically. It was astonishing that his voice didn't shake as he spoke. "A powerful one. They believe they can influence politics, inflict conflict and war, and profit off of a changing world."

"Grand schemes." Jesse McCree cocked his head, leaned one hip against a table and tucked his thumbs behind his belt buckle, seemingly untroubled. "And why exactly were they after me? I heard what you said," he nodded at Genji, a little hat tip. "But as far as I know, I am of zero sentimental value to any living creature on this earth."

Hanzo swallowed hard.

"I um... Well, I thought you'd know," Genji said, valiantly bearing up under these unprecedented circumstances. "I mean, anyone who's a threat to Talon is of value to us. I assumed you'd have some idea who Talon wanted to threaten through you."

Hanzo managed to tear his eyes off the long lines of Jesse McCree and stared at his brother. It often surprised Hanzo that Genji had such a gift for audacity.

"Incredible," McCree remarked. His smile turned saccharine and his voice became a drawl. "Well, I'm afraid you drew blank with me. Maybe you got bad intel from this Talon, but you were wrong. I'm sure you gave it a great shot. Better luck next time, sport."

"I wasn't wrong," Genji bristled. He was not easily led but he was easily drawn, and apparently, McCree was great at picking fights.

McCree shook his head. "No family, no friends, no soulmate." 

"You do too have a soulmate," Genji retorted.

Hanzo nearly threw something at him. Jesse McCree simply cocked his head, smiled a slow, easy smile. "That so?" 

"I mean," Genji said, backpedalling with characteristic ingenuity, "You've got a soul mark so—"

Jesse McCree just spread his arms, and the red serape wound over his shoulders fell aside. For the first time, Hanzo noticed Jesse McCree's left arm was a steel prosthetic, nicked and battered, but otherwise totally unmarked.

"Where?" McCree asked.

Hanzo set his bow down hard on the table beside him. He didn't need the support, but it was convenient to steady himself.

Jesse McCree didn't have a soulmark. 

Red letters had bloomed up on Hanzo's skin shortly after his first birthday, a blunt, brutal hand spelling  _ Jesse McCree _ down the inside of his left forearm. His family hid the marks with long sleeves and armbands and finally, covered it by the tattoo. His clan's mark was more indelible than any other, and Jesse McCree's name had been obliterated.

But not for Hanzo. Hanzo could trace each letter perfectly. 

But McCree wasn't marked. Not anymore. There was nothing to prove they belonged to each other…

Because they didn't, Hanzo snarled into the privacy of his own mind. A soulmate wasn't something he could afford. He was fleeing from his clan, he was trying to protect his brother, he was trying to check the growth of a terrorist organization hellbent on beginning a new war. He wasn't allowed…

He was still staring stupidly at McCree's steel left arm and only blinked when McCree crossed his arms, right over left, keeping the prosthetic close to his chest. When Hanzo looked up, McCree was staring at Hanzo's tattoo. Only for an instant, barely enough to notice.

"So I believe I'm surplus to requirements," McCree said. "I'd appreciate it if you gave me back my gun if you're going to hunt me for sport. Or take me off this island, lovely as it is. This resort is nice, great place you've found for yourself. Love this greenhouse."

"We need to look into why exactly you were targeted, that is, why Talon thought..." Genji was running out of bravado. He looked helplessly at Hanzo.

But Hanzo couldn't help him this time. Jesse McCree was here. He was here and he was real, a real person with big brown eyes and a wide, lopsided smile and sun-stained skin and a voice that drawled soft and low. Someone Hanzo felt himself tipping towards, like his balance had found its new centre of gravity.

"Sure, why don't you check that out," McCree said, cutting Genji loose with a smile. "I'd like to have a word with your brother anyway. I think you might be able to tell me something about Shimada Hanzo."

Genji audibly choked. Hanzo found that a thousand years of warlord genes were barely sufficient to keep him upright this time.

No one had spoken Hanzo's name aloud. No one could have. Hanzo went by a half a dozen aliases now. He had killed the name he had been born with, hadn't heard it in years.

And now a man with such a charming smile and the loose, worn clothing that suited him so well, spoke his name quietly. Spoke the name like he had said it often, as though it was familiar in his mouth. The name rang like a bell in Hanzo's chest.

McCree smiled as Hanzo stared at him, and the silence stretched on.

"I don't know Shimada Hanzo anymore." The lie was out before Hanzo could think about it.

"Shame. I thought you might," McCree said quietly. "Saw some Shimada insignia when your brother and I were discussing my travel arrangements. Those swords are memorable. Well, won't you spare me a minute to talk anyway?"

A thousand years of warlord ancestry was sufficient to keep him upright and scowling but when he spoke he was only able to glare at his brother and hiss, "You used your  _ Dragonblade  _ to kidnap this man?"

"I'll leave you to it," Genji said brightly. He edged towards the door in the greatest fraternal betrayal since Cain.

Hanzo opened his mouth, glared at his brother, then McCree talked over him anyway.

"Sure," McCree nodded and moved away from the door. 

Genji flitted out, and Hanzo was alone with a man whose name Hanzo had been tracing over his skin for as long as he could remember.

They stared at each other, Hanzo scowling, his mind racing, Jesse McCree with his head a little to one side, tipped down. His eyes were bright in the shadow cast by his hat brim, and he wasn't smiling anymore.

"Guess I should thank you," McCree said.

It was almost the last thing Hanzo had been expecting to hear.

"I mean I'm not familiar with Talon, but I guess your brother there? Don't know his name, sorry. Guess he got me out of a bad situation."

Hanzo managed to nod, although in agreement or just as a way to break eye contact with McCree, he really didn't know.

The silence spread between them, broken by the soft rustling of long vines and overgrown leaves. McCree stood relaxed at the door, Hanzo with his bow lying flat under his hand.

He couldn't afford this. Couldn't endanger this man. It wasn't fair to either of them it wasn't fair—

"Why do you think you were made a target?" Hanzo didn’t know why he bothered to ask.

McCree shrugged. Everything McCree did seemed deliberate. He was good at forcing his pace onto things, good at making people slow down, take it easy.

"I did have a soulmark," McCree admitted. He held out his left arm again, nicked steel and folded up flannel shirt and nothing, nothing,  _ nothing _ , that could have been Hanzo's name. "I lost my arm, careless of me I know, but I lost the name too. Didn't matter, I looked the name up and—"

"You looked for—" Hanzo bit his tongue, stood up straight with an effort, left the bow lying flat on the table.

McCree was watching him. "Yeah. When I was twenty or so, I worked with an outfit that involved a lot of travel. I talked my way onto a trip to where I thought I might find some answers." He shrugged.

"What did you find?" Hanzo was uncomfortably aware of his own heartbeat.

"Nothing," McCree looked away. "It doesn't matter. But maybe Talon didn't know that. Maybe they were targeting who my soulmate was supposed to be."

Hanzo's swallowed, and his gut was cold.

"You told me you had a question about Shimada Hanzo." The words came out slowly. It was strange to say his own name aloud. He hadn't in so many years.

McCree hesitated and for the first time since he'd ambled into the greenhouse and casually took charge of the conversation, he didn't speak. He looked at Hanzo's left arm, opened his mouth and studied the lines of the tattoo that had obliterated any claim Hanzo could have made on Jesse McCree.

"It’s… It seems foolish now,” McCree spoke slowly. “He was my soulmate. But I didn’t really think I’d ever get any answers. ”

"I was affiliated with the Shimada clan," Hanzo said recklessly. But it was perfectly true: ruling a clan is absolutely an affiliation. "I might have answers for you."

McCree hesitated, studied Hanzo’s tattoo before he chewed his lip a moment, and spoke quietly.

"I found my way to Shimada Castle. Not exactly hard to find but... I was informed that there was no need for... my continuing inquiries. The name I'd had on my skin did belong to someone inside, but Shimada Hanzo didn't want anything to do with me."

Hanzo's mouth was dry. "What?"

McCree snorted with unexpected laughter, ducking his head to hide his face. "I told you I was a fool. So many goddamn dumb ideas in my head. Thought a name on my skin could open any door between me and the one it belonged to. I mean, they had my name, right? I was a fool." His voice was harder the second time he said it, and he kept his head down, face hidden safely behind the brim of his hat.

No one had told Hanzo that McCree had come to the castle.

It had been a long time since Hanzo had left his clan in ruins to take Genji so they could both be safe. It had been a long time since he was confronted with his own anger, a long time since he was forced to remember how much he hated the people who had raised him.

"You alright?"

Hanzo flicked his gaze back up. "You went... to Shimada Castle?"

"Sure, you need to sit down? You look..." McCree stood upright, hands up, half placating, half reaching towards Hanzo. But he was careful not to close the distance between them, careful not to give Hanzo a moving target.

This man had shot Genji. He was dangerous, and he was well aware Hanzo knew that. He was a polite man, this criminal.

"No one told..." Hanzo said. He fought to keep his voice even. The tension strung between his shoulder blades was hard enough to hurt. "What happened?"

McCree was staring at him, hands still held up a little. "I was told to wait, and an hour later some steward or other came back and smiled and told me to come inside. Then switched to Japanese and informed a few guards to escort me to my death on the young lord’s orders."

Hanzo was rendered breathless on his own outrage, but McCree didn't give him a chance to dwell on it.

"So I left," he said, flatly pragmatic. "Apparently no one thought a boy who looked like I did at the time could find the mental real estate to learn Japanese, so they weren't expecting it when I booked it."

Hanzo snorted unexpectedly on a laugh.

"So I didn't really take it too hard when I lost my soulmark," McCree went on, his voice was just as well controlled as his expressions. "I mean, losing the arm was rough. But I guess I'd settled with the idea that the soulmark was a dud anyway."

Hanzo held onto his left arm, wished his soulmark was still visible. Knowing it was there wasn’t the same, not for McCree. "I can tell you he never knew you’d come. Shimada Hanzo never ordered your execution."

McCree was watching him, his eyes were wide and hungry and sad.

"Ah. Then that answers my question," McCree said quietly, "Damn. Wish I'd known that at the time."

Hanzo gave a brief, helpless snort of laughter. "What would you have done if you did know?"

"Broken in."

That made Hanzo laugh outright. "You could not have broken into Shimada Castle."

The look in McCree's eyes brought Hanzo up short.

"I would have broken in," McCree smiled. "I would have found Hanzo."

He had a pleasant smile, slow and easy and a little one-sided with a scar across his lips. It was disarming, and it left Hanzo in perfect certainty that McCree could have broken into any place he thought he might find his soulmate.

“What would you do now?”

“I don’t think that’s an issue I need to worry about. Not as though Shimada Hanzo’s trying to find me.” 

Hanzo suppressed a flinch. It took him a moment to find something to say. “But if you knew where he was, if I could tell you, would you even want to speak to him?” 

McCree didn’t speak for a moment, head cocked. “Yes, I’d like that very much.” 

“Why?” Hanzo didn’t realize until he heard it how much he hadn’t expected that answer from McCree. “You can’t even prove who you say you are to him—” 

"Ah, well about that. Can I borrow that arrow?"

The words were so incongruous, so soft-spoken, that Hanzo looked up. McCree just nodded to the table where Hanzo's bow lay forgotten, one arrow lying across the string.

"Guess I'm still your prisoner, but I need a sharp edge. Allow me?" McCree held out a hand, palm up.

In a move that should have killed him, Hanzo handed his prisoner a lethal weapon.

"Thank you," McCree said, taking it. "I lost my left arm, lost the soulmark, but…"

McCree trailed off and dragged the edge of the arrowhead down the smooth, matte grey steel of the inside of his arm.

The tension between Hanzo's shoulders was cut, all at once, and he just stared, mouth open, eyes wide.

"I want to meet Shimada Hanzo." McCree said quietly. He dragged the edge of the arrow again and again over the steel, scraping away matte grey paint in long, curling ribbons, one stroke at a time until his inner arm gleamed gold. "I guess soulmarks go deeper than skin or bone. I shouldn't have been surprised; it's in the name."

Hanzo stared at the name written huge and bold down the inside of McCree's arm.  _ Shimada Hanzo _ , written in bright gold. The gold strokes looked as though they had mended broken steel, like it had slashed its way out from the inside of McCree's arm. His name shone with a haze of radiance in the sun.

"It tends to draw the eye," McCree remarked, the most rhetorical thing Hanzo had ever heard. It was so stupid Hanzo actually shut his mouth and looked up to meet McCree's gaze. "When it started coming through, I started painting over it. But it’s something to prove who I am, if I ever met Hanzo."

They stared at each other, the two of them separated by a few feet of space and the lifetime of distrust and hurt and blind ignorance. The gold glowed up from between them.

“Why do you want to find him?” Hanzo said quietly. “You can’t have a good opinion of him.” 

McCree shrugged. “I found out he got ordered to kill his brother and instead, took his brother and the family fortune and left. I think that says a lot about a man, whatever else he is. And you say he didn’t want me dead, so that’s nice.” 

"You should have found Shimada Hanzo, should have been taken to see him when you went to the castle," Hanzo said the first and most important thing that kept hurling itself against his whirling mind. "You should have met him all those years ago. You should have won. I know he wasn't told about you."

"You have any idea why he never came looking for his soulmate?" McCree spoke slowly. "Because he never came for me."

And that left Hanzo winded, the guilt he didn't know he'd been carrying all these years suddenly heavy on his back.

"I— He thought it would protect you," Hanzo barely caught himself. "He was a warlord. As long as he was in command, everything around him was in danger. Anything he loved. His advisors were strict about it. They told him a soulmate would be an easy way to control him." And they were right, Hanzo realized. Hanzo had been easy to control.

McCree laughed then, wry and low and genuine. "Oh hell, he didn’t need to worry about that. I'm a wanted man. There's a bounty on my head and everything. I was a killer before I was fourteen, and I'm not a bad man but I am a dangerous one, despite the occasional burst of altruism."

"I see," Hanzo stared again at the gold on McCree's steel arm. "He didn't know. He should have looked for himself."

"Guess he was oddly trusting for a warlord," McCree cocked his head again, sizing Hanzo up anew. "Not what I would have expected."

Hanzo didn't want to know what McCree could have been expecting.

"Things don't have to change," McCree said, unexpectedly. He spoke like the words had been jerked out of him, like he hadn't meant to say it at all.

"What?"

"Just this, I guess, just..." McCree half shrugged, then tucked his left arm under his serape, out of sight and the gesture was so quick, looked so natural, that Hanzo thought McCree must have been doing it all his life. Hiding the soulmark, protecting Hanzo's name. He looked aside at the long boughs of a rose bush that had taken over the entire north wall.

"Shimada Hanzo's long gone, right? I haven’t been able to find him since he left his clan. Probably has things pretty well worked out for himself. Probably got plenty on his plate already, I can respect that. I was never part of his life. I don't have to be now. So I guess this conversation's just been a nice way to pass the time, stranger." McCree smiled, amiable and distant and perfectly polite.

"That's not..." Hanzo found he was gripping his left arm so tight it hurt. 

McCree spoke quietly, but it silenced Hanzo."Soulmates don't have to keep each other. Even if I could find Shimada Hanzo, it's ok if he doesn't want me."

They hadn't even touched each other, hadn't come close. Skin to skin was what Hanzo had been taught to avoid, taught that that was how soulmarked couples were bound to each other, locked in. As long as he avoided that, his family had drilled into him, Hanzo remained free.

It had been a narrow definition of freedom, on their terms.

"If you could meet him, what would you want?" Hanzo said, and his voice was far too small, far too uncertain. He was a warlord and he felt like a coward.

"I guess..." McCree reached up as if to take his hat off, then paused, halfway into the motion. "Oh hell."

He abruptly reached out into the space between them, right-handed, the bare skin sun-stained and scarred. Jesse McCree held his hand out to shake.

"Formal introductions are in order, I guess. The name's Jesse McCree," McCree said. "Good to meet you, Hanzo.”

Hanzo's heart skipped a beat. 

He’d known, all this time; of course he had known, he’d never been fooled. Jesse McCree had let Hanzo set the terms of what happened next, told him he understood. He had left Hanzo the easiest way to turn him down. He was a polite criminal; kind, even when his heart had already been broken. Hanzo could turn him down. Gently, politely, Hanzo could bow over McCree's offered hand without touching it, could give the name of one of his aliases, could ask Genji to take McCree anywhere in the world with their apologies for the inconvenience. McCree had been kind. He would let him.

"Shimada Hanzo," Hanzo took McCree's hand, moved before he could reconsider. Moved because it had been instinct. He had wanted to reach for Jesse McCree for as long as he could remember. "It's good to finally meet you."

McCree looked him full in the face, head up, eyes wide, the hat no longer casting a shadow over his face, and smiled.

"Oh," McCree sounded winded. "Ain’t that something?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions or general remarks or requests, you can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LeoandLancer)and [Tumblr](https://leoandlancer.tumblr.com/). Thank you for reading!


End file.
